QuoteMine:

"SoSe is a forum about a forum about a forum about a forum about a forum where members think Pman is a racist bigot who takes his niggerdeath too far its full of faggots and people still pissed about Something Awful ten years after it was relevant because it is now a SJW CAT LADY HAVEN!!!!!!!! Also, muh 10 bux. If you want to cry about SJWs and post with GWAAAAARSH posters who like black people but hate niggers and love queers and trannies SoSe is the place for you not Pmans cathedral of hate."

POLITICSFive Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting ForBy JESSE MYERSON | Jan 3, 2014 AT 10:00AM SHARE975 EMAILFast-food workers protest outside of a Burger King in Los Angeles.Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesIt's a new year, but one thing hasn't changed: The economy still blows. Five years after Wall Street crashed, America's banker-gamblers have only gotten richer, while huge swaths of the country are still drowning in personal debt, tens of millions of Americans remain unemployed – and the new jobs being created are largely low-wage, sub-contracted, part-time grunt work.

Millennials have been especially hard-hit by the downturn, which is probably why so many people in this generation (like myself) regard capitalism with a level of suspicion that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. But that egalitarian impulse isn't often accompanied by concrete proposals about how to get out of this catastrophe. Here are a few things we might want to start fighting for, pronto, if we want to grow old in a just, fair society, rather than the economic hellhole our parents have handed us.

1. Guaranteed Work for Everybody

Unemployment blows. The easiest and most direct solution is for the government to guarantee that everyone who wants to contribute productively to society is able to earn a decent living in the public sector. There are millions of people who want to work, and there's tons of work that needs doing – it's a no-brainer. And this idea isn't as radical as it might sound: It's similar to what the federal Works Progress Administration made possible during Roosevelt's New Deal, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. vocally supported a public-sector job guarantee in the 1960s.

A job guarantee that paid a living wage would anchor prices, drive up conditions for workers at megacorporations like Walmart and McDonald's, and target employment for the poor and long-term unemployed – people to whom conventional stimulus money rarely trickles all the way down. The program would automatically expand during private-sector downturns and contract during private-sector upswings, balancing out the business cycle and sending people from job to job, rather than job to unemployment, when times got tough.

Some economists have proposed running a job guarantee through the non-profit sector, which would make it even easier to suit the job to the worker. Imagine a world where people could contribute the skills that inspire them – teaching, tutoring, urban farming, cleaning up the environment, painting murals – rather than telemarketing or whatever other stupid tasks bosses need done to supplement their millions. Sounds nice, doesn't it?

2. Social Security for All

But let's think even bigger. Because as much as unemployment blows, so do jobs. What if people didn't have to work to survive? Enter the jaw-droppingly simple idea of a universal basic income, in which the government would just add a sum sufficient for subsistence to everyone's bank account every month. A proposal along these lines has been gaining traction in Switzerland, and it's starting to get a lot of attention here, too.

We live in the age of 3D printers and self-replicating robots. Actual human workers are increasingly surplus to requirement – that's one major reason why we have such a big unemployment problem. A universal basic income would address this epidemic at the root and provide everyone, in the words of Duke professor Kathi Weeks, "time to cultivate new needs for pleasures, activities, senses, passions, affects, and socialities that exceed the options of working and saving, producing and accumulating."

Put another way: A universal basic income, combined with a job guarantee and other social programs, could make participation in the labor force truly voluntary, thereby enabling people to get a life.

3. Take Back The Land

Ever noticed how much landlords blow? They don't really do anything to earn their money. They just claim ownership of buildings and charge people who actually work for a living the majority of our incomes for the privilege of staying in boxes that these owners often didn't build and rarely if ever improve. In a few years, my landlord will probably sell my building to another landlord and make off with the appreciated value of the land s/he also claims to own – which won't even get taxed, as long as s/he ploughs it right back into more real estate.

Think about how stupid that is. The value of the land has nothing to do with my idle, remote landlord; it reflects the nearby parks and subways and shops, which I have access to thanks to the community and the public. So why don't the community and the public derive the value and put it toward uses that benefit everyone? Because capitalism, is why.

The most mainstream way of flipping the script is a simple land-value tax. By targeting wealthy real estate owners and their free rides, we can fight inequality and poverty directly, make disastrous asset price bubbles impossible and curb Wall Street's hideous bloat. There are cooler ideas out there, too: Municipalities themselves can be big-time landowners, and groups can even create large-scale community land trusts so that the land is held in common. In any case, we have to stop letting rich people pretend they privately own what nature provided everyone.

4. Make Everything Owned by Everybody

Hoarders blow. Take, for instance, the infamous one percent, whose ownership of the capital stock of this country leads to such horrific inequality. "Capital stock" refers to two things here: the buildings and equipment that workers use to produce goods and services, and the stocks and bonds that represent ownership over the former. The top 10 percent's ownership of the means of production is represented by the fact that they control 80 percent of all financial assets.

This detachment means that there's a way easier way to collectivize wealth ownership than having to stage uprisings that seize the actual airplanes and warehouses and whatnot: Just buy up their stocks and bonds. When the government does that, it's called a sovereign wealth fund. Think of it like a big investment fund that buys up assets from the private sector and pays dividends to all permanent U.S. residents in the form of a universal basic income. Alaska actually already has a fund like this in place. If it's good enough for Levi Johnston, it's good enough for you.

5. A Public Bank in Every State

You know what else really blows? Wall Street. The whole point of a finance sector is supposed to be collecting the surplus that the whole economy has worked to produce, and channeling that surplus wealth toward its most socially valuable uses. It is difficult to overstate how completely awful our finance sector has been at accomplishing that basic goal. Let's try to change that by allowing state governments into the banking game.

There is only one state that currently has a public option for banking: North Dakota. When North Dakotans pay state taxes, the money gets deposited in the state's bank, which in turn offers cheap loans to farmers, students and businesses. The Bank of North Dakota doesn't make seedy, destined-to-default loans, slice them up inscrutably and sell them on a secondary market. It doesn't play around with incomprehensible derivatives and allow its executives to extract billions of dollars. It just makes loans and works with debtors to pay them off. Sounds nice, doesn't it?

If that idea – or any of the others described in this piece – sounds good to you, there's a bitter political struggle to be waged. Let's get to work.

MAKE THE WORLD ONE BIG INFINITELY EXPLOITABLE CO-OP (except I won't have to work)

So it all boils down to "Our solution is give people free stuff without them having to work. Surely there are plenty of people out there who want to change oil, tile roofs, and scan groceries and won't mind a bunch of their money going to a special fund to pay me to smell daffydills all fucking day".

With phaggots like this coming out of colleges nowadays, I will always have good work.

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I have a pet conspiracy theory about Lil Yachty. The Jews made him famous to put all the marginally talented blacks like Jay-Z and whomever on notice that their fame and fortune has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any talent they might have. Jewish producers can take the most retarded nigger they can find, a guy so dumb he can't even write his own name, hook him up to autotone, and make him a star. They don't need Jay-Z; Jay-Z needs them.

Chomp! I'll totally be motivated to get off my ass, overcome my social anxiety and fear of failure and go to college once Bernie Sanders gives it to me for free like a handy from Lomos mom in an Arby's Men's room-I mean a Gender Inclusive Rest Facility.

The Conservatives have a slogan which I think is despicable and defeatist: "It's better to be dead than red." And the Commies and Liberals have a slogan which is even worse, it's treason, they say: "It's better to be red than dead." We say this: "You don't have to be Red and you don't have to be Dead. Not dead. Not Red. Dead Reds"

I thought the thread title said "emoticons" and abe had another meltdown about smilie compensation, pretty disappointed right now

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Quote from: a man with an asymmetrical haircut

This was posted on the page before, but I was only able to catch up on this thread now. I'd like to point out that not all lesbian relationships have two vaginas, and it really sucks as a queer trans woman to hear this sort of generalization all the time.

Quote from: Vargo

Just realized Billy Oceans "get out of my dreams (and into my car)" is pretty blatantly about street harassment

RIP Angel baby St. Trayvon:Also of note, in Florida you don't have to prove self-defense. The onus is on the prosecution to prove that it WASN'T self-defense.

Round 2: Nig Harder: RIP good boy Mike Brown who din do nuffins: Given that the autopsy showed no signs of a struggle, perhaps Wilson hit himself in the eye with the recoil from his gun, or maybe he tripped over the body.

Ever noticed how much landlords blow? They don't really do anything to earn their money. They just claim ownership of buildings and charge people who actually work for a living the majority of our incomes for the privilege of staying in boxes that these owners often didn't build and rarely if ever improve. In a few years, my landlord will probably sell my building to another landlord and make off with the appreciated value of the land s/he also claims to own – which won't even get taxed, as long as s/he ploughs it right back into more real estate.

Think about how stupid that is. The value of the land has nothing to do with my idle, remote landlord; it reflects the nearby parks and subways and shops, which I have access to thanks to the community and the public. So why don't the community and the public derive the value and put it toward uses that benefit everyone? Because capitalism, is why.

The most mainstream way of flipping the script is a simple land-value tax. By targeting wealthy real estate owners and their free rides, we can fight inequality and poverty directly, make disastrous asset price bubbles impossible and curb Wall Street's hideous bloat. There are cooler ideas out there, too: Municipalities themselves can be big-time landowners, and groups can even create large-scale community land trusts so that the land is held in common. In any case, we have to stop letting rich people pretend they privately own what nature provided everyone.

i can't believe someone over the age of twelve could write that with a straight face. i expected the next paragraph to read something like "and you know what else really sucks? having to do homework. school should end at 3 pm!"

Why the fuck do #OWS people think they are speaking for all millennials? In my personal experience, I don't really know of many people my age who agreed with OWS. Tumblr faggots maybe but they are a small minority. I find it very obnoxious since OWS was a failure yet we still have faggots here and there who keep trying to keep the dream alive.

"God, why does my dad think he can make all the rules just because "he owns the house" and he "pays the bills". Like that fucking matters. I live in this house too dad! I have as much right to it as you do!"

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Chomp! I'll totally be motivated to get off my ass, overcome my social anxiety and fear of failure and go to college once Bernie Sanders gives it to me for free like a handy from Lomos mom in an Arby's Men's room-I mean a Gender Inclusive Rest Facility.

RIP Angel baby St. Trayvon:Also of note, in Florida you don't have to prove self-defense. The onus is on the prosecution to prove that it WASN'T self-defense.

Round 2: Nig Harder: RIP good boy Mike Brown who din do nuffins: Given that the autopsy showed no signs of a struggle, perhaps Wilson hit himself in the eye with the recoil from his gun, or maybe he tripped over the body.

Holy shit fucking swallow a tuft of ganky afro from a clogged public shower drain and choke on it you irredeemable cumguzzler.

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I have a pet conspiracy theory about Lil Yachty. The Jews made him famous to put all the marginally talented blacks like Jay-Z and whomever on notice that their fame and fortune has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any talent they might have. Jewish producers can take the most retarded nigger they can find, a guy so dumb he can't even write his own name, hook him up to autotone, and make him a star. They don't need Jay-Z; Jay-Z needs them.

It's nice that he just refers to his criticism as backlash and can't defend what he wrote. Capatilism and free markets have given us a time of amazing innovation. But this asshole doesn't want to pay rent or work so we need to undo the system.

I am sick of my peers bitch and moan about their being NO JOBS ANYWHERE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD . I tell people about the 7 buisness's that had help wanted signs I passed by on my way to work and they dismiss it by citing some lib rag study about 100,000,000 people applying for every single job. I tell them about the trucking and plumbing schools in town and they say they don't want to work their. I honestly think people in my age group expect COOL CORP to hire any mouthbreather off the street and pay them 70K a year to play with their phone at work.